I'm finally going for the emg this coming Thursday. Every other test normal. I'm looking for more reassurance that just bc I have pretty constant tiny to invisible twitches in my feet and less constant in my legs - that the emg could still be ok? I have random twitches of different sizes/types all over as well but not as much as legs and feet. I'm not the only one I know but words of encouragement are really needed. THANK YOU!

my dear, your EMG may show some age-related processes, but this should not be a reason for you to worry.I had leg fascics when I was doing my EMG but the doctor decided to do the hand first. He told me that he would look for the leg only if there would be something wrong in the hand, becasue usually legs are non-specific and may show up some deneravtion signs but not related to MND. Legs just have very long axons and usually after 25 we already have certain damages in them.

As for your particular symptoms. I may say there are tons of fellows here with the same ones and their EMG usually result maximum in this age-related slight damages without any sign of motor neuron unit damage. So you are a member of big 'family' or community of people with common twitching in the legs.

So try to be easy (know this is hard) and when you will receive the report, do not read it all through just look in the summary. This is the most important part. Typical EMG may list quite a number of deviations from the ideal state (mine for example had rythmic activity, not very usual for the thenar muscle) but look for the row called "Diagnosis" or "Suggested diagnosis", and the most important for you would be an abscence of the phrases related to "possible damage of motor neuron units". You may have "neuropathy' or "compression syndrome' in this part of report, and this is OK, this is not MND. wish you however absolutely clean report and a good resolution.

Thank you. I just keep imagining I will have bad news. The neuro will perform this test himself and afterwards will discuss the results of all my testing with my and my husband. He has already said he will do arms and legs on right and left. All other tests have been normal including blood, nerve and MRI. The MRI mentions issues with discs but only mild and no pinched nerves.

For me it had helped to think in a way "OK, if I will have bad news, I will deal with them at the moment they will arrive and not a second before". I spend (and sitll do that) so many time on thinking about possible bad news and imaging them that I really value now each and every moment at which I feel good, even if it based on my deliberate decision and not on the 'facts' which may come from the outside.

LKP1231 wrote:I'm finally going for the emg this coming Thursday. Every other test normal. I'm looking for more reassurance that just bc I have pretty constant tiny to invisible twitches in my feet and less constant in my legs - that the emg could still be ok? I have random twitches of different sizes/types all over as well but not as much as legs and feet. I'm not the only one I know but words of encouragement are really needed. THANK YOU!

Hi ! I have The same tiny Twitches in left foot , The neuro saw Them ,EMG was done in The left leg and The results was :absolutely no sign off MND ! And i am 55 years old. Bibi

Keep your chin up! You can make it to your appointment. A few weeks ago, my anxiety was just about taking over my life. I did not like the person I was becoming. I am much better now, not totally over it - I still feel some twitches and pain, and get scared, but I am much better. You can get better too. I started to tell myself that I am not experiencing any true weakness and started to "train my brain" to change the subject when I felt a twitch or started to get scared about twitches or my arm or hand pain. It helped! Also, I have been trying to keep myself busy at work and with my family. Every moment you don't think about it or get scared, you get a little bit better. Once the anxiety reaction in your body gets going, it can take a really long time - weeks or months to get rid of all of those adrenalin chemicals. One of the keys is to not let yourself get scared - change the subject in your mind. It's not easy - believe me, a few weeks ago I was having panic attacks at work and having a really hard time. But, like I said, I am better now. Also, my symptoms were the worst right before my EMG in July. Literally an hour before the EMG I was having weird worm like twitches fanning over my left forearm that freaked me out. I was at my office at the time and had to leave early for my appointment because of the panic attack they caused. I had never had a twitch like that before nor have I experienced them since. Also, the night before my EMG, I had violent twitches rapidly cascading all over my body. A few days after my EMG, those were gone. What I have now are generally pretty mild in comparison. Hope all of this helps.

Thank you! I can't even imagine that this isn't the worst thing. I don't understand why it's happening other than a terrible illness. My twitches are mostly invisible (some I can see) and that makes me even more nervous! I wish I could think about celebrating after but I feel like I'll be hitting bottom.I don't have any weakness, just soreness and some on and off pain. But it's only been 7 weeks.

Well, in the abscence of issues like diabetes or thyroid problems, or if you are not underwatrered athlet, or do not have vitamine B deficiency, this rather may be just local hypersencitivity of muscle membranes causing them sporadically react at a lower voltage than usually. Not all cells in a mucsle bundle may have that so you have twitches here and there, in new places and of vatious types. In some bundles cell pumps with the time restore proper sodium and calcium concentrations, and you have only short time twitches, and in some they may be damaged (by yet unknow factor) for a longer time so you have hotspot. Hotspots also may happen due to central activation, becasue many of BFS people report affiliation to focal paroxismal activity in the brain, mostly of migrenal type. Added anxiety and loss of crtical thinking really points on central brain involvement.Benign fasciculations are complex syndrom, and generally an amazing one as it either goes unnoticed or causes immediate referral to the doctor with a strong fear of being terminally ill. This one association is really amazing for me...

In ALS the process is different. On the local level it kills not the muscle bundles cells but neural cells in the spine, so called anterior horns, causing weak paralysis or paresis of associated muscles. In the brain, it kills motor cortex cells PERMANENTLY, causing disruption of reflex arches and spastic paralysis with spasticity (when a limb becomes weirdly distorted forever and one can not put it into normap position even with the external help). As a person who had an experience of ALS in the closest family, you said that twitches were far not the main symptom (instead weakness was), but it is really amazing how BFS overrides even the personal experience in favor of fears

you have here tons of people who whom twitches did nothing dreadful but loss of productive life for few months of fears (well, some of them had lost their family, some had lost the jobs... but not lives), we have here a community, a leader of wich ( I mean Garym, our moderator) twitches for well close to 15 years without any disability, so please please believe twitching is very common and mostly absolutely harmless.Except the fears of course.

Hold on and I am sure you will have a good report. Look on Bibi, our relatively new fellow, she was nearly thinking she is dying, but appeared that she has perfectly nice EMG.

Brain plays bad games with us - it sees unseen, hears non-existing music sometimes and may give us a feeling of bugs crawling or water falling down our skin when there is no bug and no water around so do not wonder it may make us twitch when overloaded.

It's so hard for me to believe that this could turn out not to be what I worry about. But I see all theses people here who got clear results but yet I still can't believe that could happen for me. I feel like I will be the one

to be honest I do not see any reason for you to feel you'd be the one (considering your symptomes which are quite common for BFS), but I had seen that many times here, I mean, strong fears of being not cleared by EMG. So you are not alone in that feeling too - there were so many fellows here fearing of that 'experimentum crucis' and still passing it with good results.

nope at all. among all my twitches only fascial and thenar were visible. legs ofetn twitch in deep musles there fore you can not see them. soreness after twitching is 100 % normal as this is involuntary activity. It is like you had an excercise. for your muscles there is no difference if you do it voluntarily or not.